Question for the cheaters out there

[Runrabbitw]

I’m not looking to start a witch hunt, but I’d really like to hear from people who have cheated and how they can live with it? I would be an anxious mess if I did something like that, I’m trying to wrap my head around how my ex can do it. I’ve spent the last 2 years falling for his lies and I just don’t understand. I don’t think he is a nasty person, but how does he keep on doing it , knowing that he is hurting me?
How do people flip from one person to another, over and over?

@Thewookiemustgo. @Sunshineandflipflops.

I agree with you both- I think people can change but sadly sometimes the mental harm is done and it doesn’t matter if it’s something that would never be repeated . Something just dies inside. It’s Very difficult to view your H /partner in the same way once you know they are capable of it and feel 100% the same - I think once done , even if you stay together apathy and a general ‘meh ‘ can creep in - what was done kind of snuffs the flame of ‘specialness’ out of things and you no longer will put up with any other crappy behaviour either , whereas before you kind of overlooked it. I don’t think it means someone is necessarily a bad person either , they can be a great dad, a terrific son- just not the person for you anymore if you place a huge value on loyalty and trust— because that’s the other big issue I find, your trust is no longer automatically there.

@Crikeyalmighty You've hit the nail on the head there for me.

My ex husband cheated on me for the first time when I was pregnant with our second child. It was a one-night thing with someone he used to know and he says it was just a kiss (I will never know if that was the truth but even if it was, that's crossing the same line for me).

I was devastated. He was the love of my life and I adored him. Because of that, and being pregnant with an under 2 year old, I stayed and we put it behind us (by never talking about it again, which I regret now).

We had another 10 happy years together and I'm glad I stayed, but if I'm honest, something changed that day I found out and like you say, I knew he was capable of cheating on me. I am sorry to say that attention from a close male (also married) colleague went further than it should have done some years later (we didn't sleep together) and although I knew it was wrong, i didn't feel the guilt I should have done due to what he had already done to me. I would never have done that if he hadn't broken what we had all those years before. The effect on me was far greater than I had realised and I didn't deal with it properly at the time.

I think that's why now my views on a lot of things are different. I still couldn't knowingly stay with a cheater (as hypocritical as that may be) but I also know how things can happen and that having an affair/being unfaithful doesn't = being a bad person or not loving your partner. Before all of this, I would have categorically said as some other have done on here about infidelity. Feelings and behaviours are complicated.

When I found out about his affair it made it easier to end our marriage as it was a full blown, feelings attached affair and I knew I had given our marriage enough chances. A case of sometimes love isn't enough.

My dad had countless affairs and my mum forgave every one. So it's always been normal to me.

Name me a soap opera in which affairs have not been a recurring storyline.

I've cheated in every LTR I've been in and I've been cheated on in every one of those. Only got caught once. As I got older I realised that it's really no big deal and monogamy is not realistic for me and many others. Possibly the majority.

For me, when I've got to that point of "This person is up for it, so am I" then the thought of my partner never enters my mind. The rush and excitement is immense for me.

I know now I will never be monogamous and in future I would never get into that type of relationship. Because some people do get very hurt over it. Although I intend to stay single and just have FWB situations for the rest of my life.

I think it’s entirely possible to see cheating in a black and white way, as an abusive series of action that is morally wrong, whilst understanding that people are human. But the fact is we all have hard times, we all wrestle with ourselves, but not all of us make a choice to deal with our pain by passing pain onto our spouse, children, extended family and in a lot of cases other people’s spouses and families.

Passing pain on is not acceptable.

And as for the constant narrative that ‘unhappy relationships’ cause cheating. This is absolute nonsense. I know of many affairs where the cheat categorically stated that their marriage was good. They were happy. In fact there is a study that found 50% of affairs occurred in marriages that the cheat considered good or very good. It’s pure victim blaming but it’s also people believing their marriage will be safe if they do a,b,c or x,y,z.

We can’t control another persons actions. Cheating happens in happy marriages. This is a fact.

No one forces a cheat to cheat. They have so many alternatives to their issues, but they choose the most destructive one.

They justify it in their heads with "because my partner was x" or "my relationship was y" as PP's have testified above.

@Sunshineandflipflops. Sums it up beautifully lovely. ‘Sometimes love isn’t enough’ . I remember when it was all happening to you because it was the same time I found all my husbands poems/songs about someone else from 10 years before.

@Crikeyalmighty and were you with your husband when he wrote those poems/songs about someone else?

An ex mate of mine used to pretty much hook up every time his girlfriend's back was turned. He was a team mate in my rugby side, we played semi pro in the national leagues so were literally trekking across the country at weekends for away fixtures, staying in hotels etc. I concluded he was completely amoral, there was not even a flicker of remorse or regret. Our friendship hit the rocks when he started to expect me to lie to his girlfriend on the rare occasions she got suspicious. It was just very odd, he simply had no moral compass. Knew a few women like this as well and they had an equally weird internalised way of dealing with it.

Years ago, it used to be normal to be faithful.

Hmm. How many years ago are we talking here? Cheating has been happening since the dawn of monogamy?

Years ago it certainly wasn’t the norm to be faithful! What a naive suggestion!
In fact, back in the seventies and early eighties, with reliable contraception available and before AIDS made people more cautious, affairs were common and largely a matter of opportunity.
I was a junior doctor at the time, and half the hospital staff were shagging each other with impunity. It was a cocktail of opportunity - available on call bedrooms - plus the heightened emotion of dealing with life and death emergencies - the need for stress relief- and young nurses and trainees being easily impressed by charismatic surgeons etc. Nobody was weighing up what would happen if their partners found out - they weren’t doing it to upset their partners, or planning it as cold blooded “cheating”, it was just a no strings shag.
I think the 1980s AIDS epidemic changed the zeitgeist, and moral outrage and fear of infection replaced the “free love” mantra left over from the late 60s. Fun shagging was reformulated as “cheating”, and more heavily disapproved of.
It’s quite fascinating to observe the social changes in attitude over the decades.

@Sexytimeusername

My dad had countless affairs and my mum forgave every one. So it's always been normal to me.

Name me a soap opera in which affairs have not been a recurring storyline.

I've cheated in every LTR I've been in and I've been cheated on in every one of those. Only got caught once. As I got older I realised that it's really no big deal and monogamy is not realistic for me and many others. Possibly the majority.

For me, when I've got to that point of "This person is up for it, so am I" then the thought of my partner never enters my mind. The rush and excitement is immense for me.

I know now I will never be monogamous and in future I would never get into that type of relationship. Because some people do get very hurt over it. Although I intend to stay single and just have FWB situations for the rest of my life.

I find it extremely sad that you find cheating normal because of your dad.

It's also sad that not only have you always cheated but you have also always been cheated on.

I am in my 60's and have never cheated and never would. I have never been cheated on although only really had 1 serious relationship before marrying.

I think cheating is a big deal, a very big deal and not something you do if you love and respect someone or if you have morals.

Monogamy is very very important to me and my DH and I know I would never find cheating exciting. It's just grubby

I cheated on an ex boyfriend when I was younger. He was fucking awful to me but for several reasons I felt I couldn't break up with him. I cheated on him at a friend's party, had a glimpse of life without him, and I enjoyed it.

I knew I had to break up with him at that point, because I couldn't look him in the eye. I'd shit the metaphorical bed and there was no going back.

I never saw the guy I cheated with again but I met now DH a few months later. Cheating on and then dumping my ex will forever be one of the best things I ever did.

People cheat because they think their needs/wants trump their responsibilities and the needs/wants of anyone else. That's what it comes down to.

They then find all kinds of lies to justify it to themselves.

@Runrabbitw

I’m not looking to start a witch hunt, but I’d really like to hear from people who have cheated and how they can live with it? I would be an anxious mess if I did something like that, I’m trying to wrap my head around how my ex can do it. I’ve spent the last 2 years falling for his lies and I just don’t understand. I don’t think he is a nasty person, but how does he keep on doing it , knowing that he is hurting me? How do people flip from one person to another, over and over?

He is a nasty person OP. To cheat you have to lie and to not care about your OH. That makes you a nasty person in my book.

@Sunshineandflipflops. Oh yes, we had been married 9 years at the time he wrote them and I had a 6 year old. It was a very young woman who worked with us (in our business) and they had been on lots of work trips too together . I was suspicious at the time as he was always texting her and she him
(Never mentioned but I found it on phone bills) and popping round as she lived very near - but I didn’t find anything else - but then found all the written and recorded ‘stuff’ 11 years later stuffed in a drawer. We are still married but I no longer make him the 100% - I do care but it kind of killed things for me reading and listening to how your H felt about a 21 year old. It was described to me as a bit of an infatuation at a point he felt down (his mum was dying) and he insists she wasn’t aware. I was made to feel I was massively over reacting

People are so damn primitive.

Because I fell in love.

Not because my ego needed a boost, or because I needed attention, or was a selfish narcissist, or had depressive or addictive issues. The assumption that we are all mentally damaged makes the victims feel better but is not actually true. Most people assume that affairs are just based on attention and sex. But in a lot of cases it is far more than that.

You can ask the same question for how do people manage to steal, rape, rob or murder people. Obviously a lot of people manage to do all these things.

Like cheating, people who do all these things will often try to minimise, excuse or justify what they're doing. You will see examples in this thread. There's no point trying to understand them, because it takes someone of a certain character to do it.

To be a cheat you have to be reconciled with being a competent liar and fake.

You also have to have your excuses, sorry, reasons lined up and ready to recite on occasions like this.

Throw in a bit of minimising and probable gaslighting and you're good to go.

I think that people who cheat are generally avoidant. They go behind their partner's back because they are avoiding conflict or communication about their needs.

@Lovestoned falling in love doesn’t give you permission to cheat. You fell in love so you were faced with a choice. To deceive your partner and cheat, or be honest and tell your partner it was over because you’d met someone else and wanted to pursue a relationship with the other person.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you are mentally damaged in some way. It just means you made a poor choice when faced with a difficult situation. There’s no justification.
To be honest nothing victims of cheating can say to themselves really makes them feel better. Being betrayed hurts like hell whether the perpetrator is mentally damaged or not. It makes no difference in pain to be hit by a blue bus or a red bus. It’s still a bus.

Most people who cheat don't think it's wrong. It makes them happy and they want to be happy. So they do it. They don't really see that it is hurting a spouse as the spouse doesn't know. No different to if he was a secret gambler for example. He likes doing it. The wife doesn't know. Where's the harm? I don't think they are necessarily bad people. They just don't buy into faithfulness being important. I don't think over the course of a long marriage that most people are faithful. So they are certainly not alone! And given that faithfulness is not biologically really a thing and is purely a social nicety I don't think this is surprising.

I cheated because I was in an abusive relationship and I didn't know how to leave.
Had an affair with a senior colleague at work. I knew that if he found out, he would leave me or kill me. Somehow I felt braver by having the affair.
Took me a long time to get over

@Thewookiemustgo your post was very succinct and makes so much sense. And it's true, cheating is at best a poor choice and at worst just pure selfishness and a lack of care that you're inflicting pain on others. Particularly interesting those who said they were in a bad place mentally, decided to then inflict mental anguish on another person. The hypocrisy.

It doesn't matter how you got there, your 'reasons', your excuses really, you chose that path, when you could have chosen integrity and no extenuating circumstances or fancy wording footwork can change that foundational fact.

Most people who cheat don't think it's wrong. It makes them happy and they want to be happy.

No impulse control. No values.